Outsider Amongst Outsiders - Some Thoughts On Aspects Of "Involution Ocean" By Bruce Sterling

one of the things that influenced my art and my "philosophy" a lot is a love story in the novel "involution ocean" by bruce sterling. it is a thing that fascinated me and i often got back to thinking about it.
it is many years since i actually read this book, so maybe i don't even got it right and maybe memorized the story in a wrong way. the way i remember it, the love is between a man who travels to a different planet to search for a certain substance and joins the crew of a ship which sails on a desert ocean to attain this substance. on this ship he meets an alien women and they fall in love with each other. still fairly normal for a science fiction novel. the interesting thing is the background story of the woman. she lived on a planet that was invaded or discovered by the main inhabitants of that part of the universe (the humans, if i remember correctly). but she was an outcast, outsider amongst the population of this planet. when the other aliens attacked the crew that landed on the planet, they died because they got into contact with human blood, which is poisonous for them. the twist here is now, that while the people who landed on the planet (more crews came after the first one, if i recall correctly) were seen as invaders that might bring their downfall and need to be attacked by the aliens, for the woman they were almost saviors, since they were a way to become free of the oppression of the other aliens.
as i said, i m not sure this is the correct story, but to me it does not matter much, because like this the story is in the way that matters to me - if it were different, it might be much less important.
i am not clear why the story fascinates me so much, but over time i developed some theories about it.
first, what should be obvious is that this is a commentary on the colonization of america. the slaughtering of the native americans was one of the biggest crimes ever commited against mankind, and this it is very clear to me. yet without justifying this, sterling points out (if this interpretation is right) that before the invaders that we now call "americans" came, and murdered and oppressed the native americans, the native americans already had murdered and suppressed others too, that were deemed outsiders by them (and likewise, in the future 100 or 200 years or whenever, a people could come and murder and oppress the americans in a similiar way). this is an interesting, but also twisted point of view that bruce sterling (possibly) raises here.
but i don't think this is the main fascination. what this story presents, is something i call "an outsider amongst outsiders". as we know, in the society we live in, the western civilization, those who are more creative, passionate, thoughtful or emotional - maybe one could say more "noble" - are pushed to the fringes of society where they usually have to live the life of underdogs. what sterling shows here is the idea, that even amongst that fringe, amongst the outcasts and alienated, there could be people, that are so far away from the masses and the standard, that even amongst the outcasts they are outcasts again, rejected by these people and groups.
it's obvious that these people could then be much more brilliant, excelling, genius then all the others. maybe reaching a point that is high above the rest, something that is not describale or at least not easily describable.
there are some more thoughts i have had on this, maybe i will write them down in the future.